A News Blog

Keeping you in the know in the world of politics

TUSCALOOSA | The Druid City has been all but left out of the presidential sweepstakes once the races got underway in earnest late last year. Mitt Romney spoke at the inaugural Lincoln-Reagan dinner sponsored by the local Republican party in September, 2006, while still governor of Massachusetts (and said it was “too soon” to declare himself a presidential candidate) and Rudy Giuliani addressed the same group last May. But since last Labor Day, the semi-official start of any campaign season,… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | The Hillary Clinton campaign confirmed Thursday that the Madison County Democratic Women, a group whose name is pretty well self-explanatory, will host former President Bill Clinton in Huntsville Saturday. According to a brief email I got Wednesday, when the visit was still tentative, the event will be in someone’s home and the price of hearing Clinton orate for an hour or two would be $1,000 a head, “no exceptions.” I have heard Clinton speak a few times and… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | Who got the most votes in Florida Tuesday? Hillary Clinton, by a long shot. She garnered more than 857,000 Democratic votes, while the winner of the Republican presidential primary, John McCain, got about 694,000 — about 163,000 votes fewer than Hillary. Ah, but as you political junkies that keep up with things like this know, the Democrats did not actually have a contested primary. Because of the hard-headedness of the Florida Legislature in moving the state’s primary up… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | Japanese movie director Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece “Rashomon” deals with the problem of obtaining the truth of an event through multiple viewpoints and has even entered the lexicon as shorthand for a situation in which ultimate meaning is hard to discern. Which brings us to Tuesday’s special legislative election in Cullman County in which Democrat James Fields defeated Republican County Commissioner Wayne Willingham in Alabama House District 12. The seat was vacated last fall by Democratic Neal Morrison, who… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | The surprise announcement today that former U.S. senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards has dropped out of the Democratic presidential race now puts the spotlight squarely on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the only two viable candidates left. It has also set off an explosion of speculation about what it all means. There is no word yet about whether he intends to endorse either of the remaining candidates after he bows out officially in New Orleans this… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | In 35 years of covering politics in Alabama, I have never seen the level of campaigning in our medium-sized, deep South state in presidential primaries. The previous post here, for instance, had to be rewritten and added to five times today as the announcements of activities and visits by both Democratic and Republican campaigns and candidates flowed in via phone calls, emails and news reports. The dynamic at work, I think, is that both parties are awarding delegates… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | With one week to go before the Feb. 5 Democratic and Republican primaries in Alabama, candidates from both party are getting their ground games in order. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic former vice presidential candidate John Edwards have also scheduled appearances in Huntsville Thursday and Birmingham Saturday. McCain will speak at 1:30 p.m. at the downtown Sheraton, while Edwards, who cancelled an appearance in Huntsville for Wednesday, only to reschedule it for 9 a.m. at the… Read More »

GodTube.com, a YouTube-type site for Christians, has launched an election polling aspect to its site that promises to allow Christians a voice on important issues and collect that data. But it is an unscientific polling process. (I blogged about GodTube in November.) In a press release issued today, GodTube said it is “uniquely positioned to reach the Christian community.” With more than 2.5 million monthly visitors, they are probably right. The release also notes the religion has “taken center stage”… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | The Associated Press is reporting that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is planning not one, but two visits to Alabama before next Tuesday’s primaries. AP reports that the former North Carolina senator and vice presidential candidate in 2004 will have a news conference at the Huntsville International Airport at 3 p.m. tomorrow (Wednesday) and is also planning a public event of some type Saturday in Birmingham, where Illinois Sen. Barack Obama campaigned Sunday. Campaigning in Alabama makes sense… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | Sunday The Tuscaloosa News launched what we hope will be your one-stop-shopping website for political news in Alabama, through the Feb. 5 Democratic and Republican primaries to the November general election and beyond. We began on an auspicious day, after Illinois Sen. Barack Obama won a landslide in the South Carolina Democratic primary and headed to Birmingham todwhere he gave a rousing speech to 11,000 people in a Southern state very much like South Carolina and where he… Read More »